By Robert "Doc" Cross

Clams On The Run

The planet Mars exists in most of the realities we will be dealing with here. The notable exceptions are the two realities where Mars was destroyed by a massive cometary impact, the one where Mars was stolen by the Gfgrgngk as their worldship passed through our solar system and the one where Mars vanished on August 2, 1753 and was replace a few days later by another Earth. Except for those instances, Mars is the same as in our reality. Except for…

The seven realities where Mars retained a thin, but life supporting atmosphere and has varying types of worldwide ecosystems. On one, most of the planet is covered by a forest of short evergreen trees and tough grasses. Many lifeforms live there, all adapted to a cold, but not frigid climate. On another, the planet has many ruined cities which cover hundreds of square miles. Outside of the cities, most of the planet is grassland.

The three realities where Mars has native Martian populations living either aboveground in domes or underground in vast cities. In all these cases, the Martian atmosphere is no better than in our reality, but there is still an ecology based mostly around lichens and mosses..

The reality where Mars is home to billions of robots of various sizes who seem to be terraforming it for a species that is decidedly non-human.

There are, of course, many realities where humans have gone to Mars. In some, they have even terraformed it. The technological level of these realities range from steampunk to 1930’s to space age to nanotech age. In a few of these realities, humans discovered that Mars had once been inhabited. Sometimes, this discovery did not bode well for the humans.